


Monsters make so-so gestures

by cruentum



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Erumike Week, M/M, Soldiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/pseuds/cruentum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They gave them guns and told them to shoot. Now they drop them back in the real world, where people do people things, and expect that they don't still taste death with every inhale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monsters make so-so gestures

**Author's Note:**

> written for tumblr erumike week day 2: scent.

The stink of the desert didn't leave when Mike got off the plane and tasted the rotting sea of the nearby coast on his tongue. It lingered when he collected his shit, burrowing deeper as he stepped out into the noise of the city.

"Just take me here," he told the cab driver, gave him the torn slip with the address. Even when he closed his eyes, the glaring neon noise penetrated, the jabber of voices, honking cars, then quieter the further they went out to the edge of the city.

The house was quiet. He took the key from around his neck and let himself into his apartment. A thick layer of dust on all surfaces dulled the view when Mike turned on the lights, dropped his bag and sat in the entryway, legs crossed.

Gunfire rang in his head, magazines emptied into bodies, as he painted targets over their faces, blurring their features into a grey paste. They'd been trained on bodies with wrapped heads. "Nothing about them is human," their commander would say. And they'd point and shoot, ratatatata of machine guns, thhhumppp-shhh of grenades vibrating the ground beneath them, and the smell of iron and melting bodies that stuck around.

His mobile rang. Erwin. "Hey," Mike said when he picked up.

"Are you in yet?"

"Just."

"Good."

"Yeah." Mike picked at the laces on his boots, his uniform that was carrying sand in every nook and cranny.

"Sorry I couldn't meet you there."

"Took a cab," Mike replied. "Don't worry about it."

The static of the phoneline hung between them, the TV at Erwin's blubbing in the background.

"How's your place?"

"Empty. I don't know. I've not looked around yet." It was quiet. A car passed on the road every now and then, the faint sound of his neighbors on the other side of the wall but mostly it was the hum in his own ears, the pounding of his blood in his head, and the desert stink that clogged up his nose and the back of his throat.

"-I'll bring some beer," Erwin finished a sentence Mike had mostly missed.

"Sure."

"Give me twenty." Erwin ended the call.

Mike pocketed the mobile and pulled himself up. The main switch blinked dully in the kitchen off to the side of the main area, everything packed away. The night outside didn't penetrate, the light only painted his own reflection on the windows, hair short and not hanging down to his nose, shoulders drooped. He straightened up, at attention, and stared at the clear lines of his body like the mould they'd melted them all into. He rubbed at his nose as he fell into ease again.

None of them had set out to be soldiers.

Erwin's knock on the door pulled Mike from staring at his reflection. Mike had last seen him screaming his head off, mangled bits of flesh sticking out from his shoulder and the blood soaked into his shirt, spilling over his and Levi's hands. They'd got him out. Mike's gaze dropped to his shoulder, the empty sleeve.

Mike pushed the door open to let Erwin in.

"You need sleep," Erwin said when he set the booze on the table, got a beer for Mike, one for himself, then sat against the far wall between the two windows, legs splayed easy.

"Probably. Just seems strange. It's too quiet." No choppers, not ten other men getting sleep in the same tent, not the sounds of gunfire. The dust of his apartment tasted ashen, too, nothing like being alive.

"You'll get used to it," Erwin replied, contradicting the bags under his eyes and the tight pull of his mouth. Mike swallowed the lie like candy, though. Sweet. "How long has Levi got?"

"Another three months but I think he'll be signing up for another after. You can't keep him from it." Mike sat against the wardrobe, a ninety degree angle from Erwin, beer resting on his knee. If you pulled him out he'd rampage on a mass murder spree in the real world, Mike was sure. With some of them, you just knew it, saw the cracks all over them in the field, smelled the joy when they'd gunned someone down.

No judgment, it needed all sorts.

"Are you going back?"

"I thought I wasn't." Mike glanced around the apartment. It was quiet. "I'm not," he added.

"Right." Erwin sipped from his beer, watched him.

"How's it with-," Mike gestured. "With the arm?"

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

Erwin smelled like the city now. He fit into this room with the dust and this town with the glaring neon, while every movement Mike made seemed out of place.

"You'll need a TV," Erwin said.

"Why?"

"It'll, I don't know, it fills the gaps."

Erwin had been commander when they got hit. Fucking random explosion that sent his blood over all their faces. Levi had been white as a sheet, teeth digging into his lips and he'd fired two, three magazines' worth into the desert, not hitting a single thing.

"We missed you out there," Mike said. "It was strange after."

"I missed, yeah, I missed it too." Erwin twisted his palm over the mouth of the bottle. "Hanji still up to her thing?"

"She's out every day talking to people. We got her to take a few people along, some guns, but she still thinks she can magic it into some peace agreement. Says we just need to talk and it'll be fine. Fuckers don't want to talk."

Erwin nodded. They lapsed into silence. Mike thought of things to say (that time Jean pissed his mattress, that one of the young kids had died too, how the food sucked balls…) but they all came back to the desert. To not sleeping. To killing monsters.

"Another one?" Mike said as he grabbed a second beer, settled next to Erwin this time. Erwin's stump was pressed to his shoulder they were sitting that close. Mike's combat boots and pants contrasted with Erwin's trainers, shoelaces half undone, his jogging pants, the t-shirt.

Mike leaned in a little, nose pressed somewhere below Erwin's chin. Underneath it all, underneath the soap and the city, Erwin still reeked of war. Familiar, at last.

"How fucked up are you?" Erwin asked.

"Still got ten toes and ten fingers."

Erwin huffed.

"I don't know. Not as fucked as Levi."

"No one is."

They'd shipped Erwin out to hospital and they only got the note that he'd be sent home and that was that. Mike and Levi both had tried to fill the gap by fucking each other instead of Erwin but they'd never matched up right and Mike had left Levi to the war and himself to his own hand.

War did funny shit with you. It made you suck cock and it made you shoot someone point blank in the face and you couldn't even say if they were female or male after, how old they were, for either of them.

"It's dull out here," Erwin said. "Everything's dull." He traced his fingers along his knee like he was tracing enemy lines on a map, calculating approach and risk and then leading them in deep. He stilled his fingers. "People don't get it. I talk to this doctor about things in my brain and he nods but he doesn't get it. Nothing here matters. It's all just petty bullshit."

"You'd be back?"

"I've never been much good at anything else." Erwin laughed, then quieted.

Mike had shifted closer, head almost on Erwin's shoulder just breathing in the thing underneath the city and underneath the war, the thing he'd had when he'd practically slept with his face in Erwin's crotch, just inhaling him.

"It doesn't work anymore," Erwin said. He grabbed his crotch and gave it a squeeze. "It's the drugs they got me on to keep me normal. They're good. Just…" He moved his hand in so-so gesture, then left it.

Erwin had bit more than half a year on him, outside, back with the civvies, but he twitched every now and then, fingers restless. It looked a lot like it felt in Mike's head.

"Definitely need a TV," Mike said when he finished his beer. He got them another one and more after, and then, when they'd had everything Erwin had brought over they lay on the floor, side by side, Mike curled behind Erwin with his face pressed into the nape of Erwin's neck, the lights off. He could feel every thrum of his heartbeat, and with every inhale, he arrived here a little more. With every inhale of Erwin, the good parts of the desert settled in the dusty shit apartment, in a city he didn't know. 

The weight of his gun on his side was missing, and the idea of getting up in the morning with no one expecting him to do anything made his chest tight.

His cock was hard against Erwin's ass. Erwin had his fingers around it. He'd pushed his jogging pants down and rubbed his naked ass against Mike's pants like he needed to get that cock in himself, if they weren't both too fucked to coordinate their bodies. So it was just Erwin's hand, and Mike reciprocated, palmed Erwin's soft cock and palms.

"It's been lonely," Erwin said. "You don't notice until you turn off everything else. Until you look around yourself and realize no one needs you. No one."

They stroked each other. It passed the time until the sun came up, pink-ing the floorboards around them. There was another row of houses behind Mike's. There were children, a family preparing breakfast, when they moved off the floor, pulled up pants and straightened shirts.

"Maybe I should have thought to bring breakfast," Erwin said, the smile stretching the lines around his eyes into a good play at a smile.

"I still want to kill those fuckers." Mike stared out at the family, because sunrises like this, they'd be out there and shoot them down when they have a wash, no matter who they were, just get them bright and early and wolf down the stinking thing that passed for food after. A day's work done before the world had even quite realized it.

An airplane passed far overhead, a few clouds hung in the sky. It was quiet. There was no war here, only people.

"I can still smell the desert all around me," Mike said.

Erwin nodded. "You should change out of that, and then, maybe it'll go away."

Erwin was a fucking liar, but Mike took a shower and got on something else and by the time he was done Erwin had opened the windows and stood looking out. 

"I'm not sure I'm good for this outside those tents," Erwin said, vaguely gesturing between them, between Mike's cock and his own.

"Fuck knows I'm not sure I'm good at anything," Mike replied.

"You smell good," Erwin said when Mike stood close.

"Yeah." The soap would rinse away the war eventually, maybe.

They had nothing else to do. They might as well stick with a little of what they knew.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr at [dublindarts](http://dublindarts.tumblr.com)


End file.
